FCPS Boundary Review - New Maps

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The email from Reid switches from first person to third person and back to first person. She said that she took an extra day to work on it. Is she having her goon squad do her editing?

I noticed that. I had to read it twice.

[Anonymous]

It is very unclear what the takeaway is from these slides…this is something that feels like would have been done a year ago when they did initial analysis…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is very unclear what the takeaway is from these slides…this is something that feels like would have been done a year ago when they did initial analysis…

Sounds like it’s smoke and mirrors to create the illusion that work is being done before they finally come back with the real maps in October.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but the data in this presentation is crap.

It has no value being lumped all in one general number, from Kinder through 12th grade.

At a minimum, the data should have been separated between elementary, middle school and high school.

Almost all of the high school transfers are due to people escaping bad schools using the AP/IB loophole.

That would be the number one transfer reason at high schools, followed by foreign language transfers.

Putting the 3 levels all together completely hides the biggest elephant in the room, which is the failure of IB.

People are unhappy about elementary schools getting rezoned, but REALLY furious about high schools getting rezoned.

The high school data needs to be isolated in order to provide any value whatsoever

Very good point. Yeah, this should be broken down by transfer reason and school. Hopefully the BRAC has seen that level of detail.

Talk to a BRAC member who actually cares and they’ll tell you the requests for better, more granular data are routinely ignored and rebuffed. That’s another reason why they stuffed the BRAC with a bunch of other “friendly faces” who’ll just go along with whatever Reid and the School Board want to do.

WTF, Are you serious? This if the committee that’s supposed to be offering priorities and suggested maps. How can it do anything if its data requests are routinely ignored?

I have spoken with several BRAC members, including some who are generally pro FCPS.

FCPS is not giving them the information they have been asking for.

Wow… what are they trying to hide or stop?

[Anonymous]

what are the actual proposals? are there any that we know of?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what are the actual proposals? are there any that we know of?

From the email:

“What’s Next

Fall Community Boundary Review Meetings
In the fall, the consultant will update the Boundary Explorer Tool with refined scenarios. We will present the scenarios and gather feedback during another round of community meetings as part of Phase 2 (Part 2).

Final Advisory Committee Scenario Development
The consultant will develop boundary scenarios in November and December. Then, the committee will review those and make any final recommendations to the superintendent.

Superintendent’s Recommendations
I will consider the committee’s recommendations, and based on my review, I will present recommendations and a proposed implementation plan to the Fairfax County School Board in January 2026.”

It sounds like we will get a trickle of “refined scenarios” in the online tool over the next two months, that will then be formally presented in more community meetings.

Then, after the election, “The consultant will develop boundary scenarios in November and December.” This will result in final scenarios that Reid will present in January. My takeaway is that we will get to see the final scenario sometime the first week of winter break. Lovely.

You can’t make this up. Two years of everyone’s time and energy for the actual scenarios to be put together in a narrow window post-election, dumped on us during winter break, then pushed out in January, to take effect the following August.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They can't look at transfers without also doing a residency check at every high school at or over 100% capacity

This could be done in less than 30 minutes using Excel. 5 minutes using ChatGPT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but the data in this presentation is crap.

It has no value being lumped all in one general number, from Kinder through 12th grade.

At a minimum, the data should have been separated between elementary, middle school and high school.

Almost all of the high school transfers are due to people escaping bad schools using the AP/IB loophole.

That would be the number one transfer reason at high schools, followed by foreign language transfers.

Putting the 3 levels all together completely hides the biggest elephant in the room, which is the failure of IB.

People are unhappy about elementary schools getting rezoned, but REALLY furious about high schools getting rezoned.

The high school data needs to be isolated in order to provide any value whatsoever

Very good point. Yeah, this should be broken down by transfer reason and school. Hopefully the BRAC has seen that level of detail.

Talk to a BRAC member who actually cares and they’ll tell you the requests for better, more granular data are routinely ignored and rebuffed. That’s another reason why they stuffed the BRAC with a bunch of other “friendly faces” who’ll just go along with whatever Reid and the School Board want to do.

WTF, Are you serious? This if the committee that’s supposed to be offering priorities and suggested maps. How can it do anything if its data requests are routinely ignored?

I have spoken with several BRAC members, including some who are generally pro FCPS.

FCPS is not giving them the information they have been asking for.

Wow… what are they trying to hide or stop?

I truly think the record keeping and analysis has been so poor for so long that they not only literally cannot provide the requested data/information - they also can’t fathom why it would be important to have it. They’re all in way over their heads at this point.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You could immediately fix the MS transfer situation by either instituting AAP at all MS so there is no longer a need for MS AAP centers, or by ending the MS AAP program and putting in more sections of honors courses instead. That immediately fixes the situation at Carson, LB Middle, and Rocky Run.

It also fixes Key/Lewis and crowding at Lake Braddock.

If you are in bounds for Key/Lewis and in MS AAP at Lake Braddock, can you stay at LB for HS? I would assume you’d claim the IB to AP transfer reason, but would they allow you to stay at LB, or would you have to go to a different school instead for that (I’d imagine Hayfield is the closest?)

End MS AAP centers, and end IB county-wide, maybe leaving it at 2 HS to allow for students who want it to transfer to those schools. That alone would solve so many problems. No AAP transfers past ES, and far fewer HS transfers to get AP classes instead of IB. You’d still have the language loophole, but perhaps if 20 students at Key/Lewis suddenly expressed interest in French or German or what have you, they would send a teacher over there to fill that need. Equitable access!

In that scenario it would be Hayfield. You wouldn’t be a allowed to stay at LB past middle.

Lake Braddock had 542 transfers into the school last year.

Since almost all of the WSHS AAP kids go back to WSHS, at least some of those 542 kids would have to be Lewis AAP students.

FCPS’s slides say it’s 252 into LBMS and 293 into LBHS. The 252 at the 7-8 level has to be almost all Key MS AAP. Where are the 293 in grades 9-12 coming from? Are they IB transfers from Robinson and/or Annandale? That’s a lot of kids if so. Robinson has a good rep too, about the same as LB. So if kids are transferring out of Robinson for AP at LB, that’s another not great sign for IB.

According to the transfer dashboard, 293 kids transferred into Lake Braddock High School (9th-12th) last year:

From:

Annandale 87 students
Robinson 85 students
West Springfield 39 students
Lewis 32 students
Hayfield 23 students
South County 10 students

Mount Vernon, Centreville, Fairfax, Edison, Woodson, Justice, Falls Church, Westfields, and South Lakes all had low single digit transfers in, likely teachers kids or Ft. Belvoir resident transfers.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/fcps.fts/viz/SY2024-25StudentTransfersDashboard/ReadMe

Interestingly, the dashboard shows only 1 Lewis student transferred into WSHS last year. That number is without a doubt much higher.

58 transfers into West Springfield, which is closed to transfers. Their numbers don't add up

From

South County 20 students
Lake Braddock 12 students

Justice, Annandale, Lewis, Edison, WestPo, Mount Vernon, Robinson, Westfield, Hayfield all show as 1 transfer into WSHS, 9 total students transferring in from those schools according to the transfer dashboard.

20+12+9 = 41 transfers into WSHS. The total number of transfers into WSHS according to the dashboard is 58 students. That is a 17 student difference. Why are the numbers so different? Did I miss a school from the map?

Which begs the question, if 20 South County students are transferring into WSHS, why does the school board want to transfer Hunt Valley/WSHS students to South County?

Wouldn't it be simpler and far less disruptive to just send the South County Students back to South County instead of rezoning WSHS?

Moving 20 kids is not the same as moving 4 years worth of a feeder school. There are approximately 100 kids/year coming out of hunt valley, and nearly all will go to west springfield. Moving that feeder school would eventually result in a net change of ~400 students.

https://schoolprofiles.fcps.edu/schlprfl/f?p=108:13::::0_CURRENT_SCHOOL_ID,P0_EDSL:378,0

Unless I somehow screwed up the thought process?

[Anonymous]

They totally ignored the IB to AP transfers, that is kind of amazing. Unless they are counting those as language transfers. So SLHS kid transfers to Oakton for AP and Japanese, are they counting that as language? Even when SLHS has Japanese? Or transfers to Langley for AP and Russian? The several hundred kids from Herndon are considered language transfers or IB transfers?

It looks like they tried to ignore the IB/AP loophole.

[Anonymous]

I suspect that they would come up with a completely different map in October. They talked about the transfer issue as if we were in the early stage of boundary change discussion. Also remember the sale of KAA will be finalized sometime in August.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I suspect that they would come up with a completely different map in October. They talked about the transfer issue as if we were in the early stage of boundary change discussion. Also remember the sale of KAA will be finalized sometime in August.

Reid said that KAA would not affect the boundary review but I don’t see how it couldn’t. Do we know when the sale closes so hopefully we can get some answers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I suspect that they would come up with a completely different map in October. They talked about the transfer issue as if we were in the early stage of boundary change discussion. Also remember the sale of KAA will be finalized sometime in August.

This has got to be the most screwed-up, convoluted, ass-backwards process in FCPS history. The incompetence on Reid’s part and the negligence on the part of the School Board members is truly just staggering. Just a complete debacle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I suspect that they would come up with a completely different map in October. They talked about the transfer issue as if we were in the early stage of boundary change discussion. Also remember the sale of KAA will be finalized sometime in August.

Reid said that KAA would not affect the boundary review but I don’t see how it couldn’t. Do we know when the sale closes so hopefully we can get some answers?

The purchase is expected to close by Aug. 14, 2025.

[Anonymous]

So is the school board involved in any way until approving at the very end? It doesn’t seem like it. Thru is coming up with the new maps as well? Or is it now BRAC and Reid who are “tweaking” the maps?